Taste Master Western Australia

Western Australia is a huge and varied state with 12,000km of wild stunning coastline, most of it completely undeveloped.

It’s mind boggling to think that here are some of the most amazing beaches on earth, with no-one on them! You can quite honestly have a beach completely to yourself. Western Australia is so unique in that fact, if this was anywhere else in the world it’d be crammed full of people with high-rise buildings and properties popping up all over the place.

That’s why I love WA, it’s a place of contrasting colours and textures, plants and animals, land and sea. You really won’t find anywhere else like it on Earth. Here’s a look at some of my favourite coastline spots, starting with Cape Leveque in the North, travelling down to the wilderness coastline of the South West.

Cape Leveque: Situated at the tip of the Dampier Peninsula in the North West of Western Australia, it was here that I learnt to catch and cook huge mud crabs on the banks of Hunter’s Creek. After waiting for the tide to go out, myself and indigenous guide Brian Lee took our crab catching poles and hessian sacks to go get some dinner. A truly remarkable experience.

Cape Leveque – Dampier Peninsula

Cygnet Bay – Cape Leveque

Amazing WA – Cape Leveque!

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Cable Beach: One of the iconic things to do in Western Australia is a camel ride along the famous Cable Beach as the sun is setting. Rated as one of the top five beaches in the world, it’s a 22km stretch of pure white sand with red ochre cliffs on one side and the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean on the other.

Sunset Camel Safari

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Cape Range National Park: Cape Range is a place of rugged limestone ranges, breathtaking deep canyons and 50km of pristine beach. I stayed at Sal Salis, a remote beachside safari camp nestled in the dunes of the park. It’s an incredibly isolated yet stunning location, just metres from the World Heritage Ningaloo Reef. Grab your mask and snorkel for an underwater adventure you’ll never forget, or if visiting between April and June swim with the world’s largest fish, the docile whale shark.

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So Ladies and Gents, the last leg of my trip around Australia’s South West brings me to Manjimup, where over 80% of the shire is made up of National Park and forestry.

Manjimup, situated in the Southern Forests region, is an agricultural hot spot, home of the Pink Lady apple, delicious marron and famous black truffle (more on them later).

It’s quite remarkable that such a small pocket of Western Australia grows such an abundance and variety of produce. The locals say it’s probably down to the fertility of the soil, purity of the rainfall and 365 growing days a year. To celebrate the diversity of the horticultural industry in the region, the Manjimup Cherry Harmony Festival, a unique community event, is held every year.

And I was invited to take part in the Cherry Stone Spitting Competition! Ooooh yeahhh!! I’m not the most amazing photographer in the world, but I reckon this is the best photo I’ve ever taken. Our tie-dye hero is taking part in the warm-up heats and LOOK! you can see the cherry stone flying through the air and everything!

I arrived in Manjimup the evening before the festival to meet with the organisers and it was here that I was to meet my main competition for the next day’s stone spitting extravaganza……Mr. Rob Palmer.

For folk back in England, Rob is a handy man on Australian home improvement programs and also won their version of Strictly a couple of years ago. But he’s not light on his feet, he’s a big brute of a fella and could spit a cherry stone through a concrete block I reckon. During our practice spit he tried to psyche me out a little bit, comparing me with the capitulating England cricket team, saying I’d choke on the big day (metaphorically and quite literally).

But I wasn’t put off, I’m the Taste Master! I was determined. I was focused. I was dedicated.

….I was hiding cherries in my pocket to practice at home that night.

Before the big showdown I visited Kay Gravett who grows russelberries, quite a tart fruit which are unique to the region. Kay grows the raspberry-esque fruit in her garden and uses it in all kinds of jams and chutneys, just another example of the diversity of produce in the Southern Forests region.

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In the past whenever I thought about Australia the first thing that popped into my head was the red earth of the outback.

So it came with great surprise to be travelling through rolling green hills and lush vegetation as we journeyed our way into Australia’s South West.

Two hours after leaving Perth on our road trip down south I was starting to get peckish, so stopped off for snacks in Bunbury. Bunbury’s a city that’s really going places and after a whistle stop tour of some great spots on the high street and waterfront, I discovered that you really can have your cake and eat it here.

Breakfast at Mojos in Bunbury

Hmmm…I wonder where that’s going?

…yep, thought so

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After washing rum baba out of my beard it was back on the road, another hour south to the luxury resort of Cape Lodge where I’d be staying that evening, to meet up with Sean from Margaret River Discovery Tours. His tours are all about reconnecting with the land and understanding nature. I realised that a slow kayak down the Margaret River is one of the most relaxing, tranquil things you can do, and that the views out into the Indian Ocean from the cliff tops are mesmerising.

Taking it easy on the Margaret River

Fresh mussells from the river bed

Indian Ocean

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That night I was staying at Foragers, a farm based cooking school, 130km away in the town of Pemberton. Run by Sophie and Chris, it’s not only exceptional cookery classes and luxury chalets, every Saturday Sophie hosts seasonal dinners in their 40 seat dining hall, using ingredients fresh from the kitchen garden and produce from the Southern Forests region.

Foragers Cookery School and Restaurant

Amuse bouche

One of the great courses from the night

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After all this food I needed to do some exercise. The Munda Biddi mountain bike track stretches just over 1000km from the south of Perth all the way down to Albany in Australia’s South West, making it (possibly) the longest off-road mountain bike trail in the universe.